My brother is an electrical engineer and went to computer science grad school at Stanford, and he'd tell me stories about the happy hours he'd organize.
When I was 12, I went to boarding school, where I discovered the computer, which meant I no longer had to write something down and get someone to play it, I could just type it into the computer and hear it back.
I actually studied engineering in school - I have a degree in mechanical engineering. But, when I got out of school, instead of going to work as an engineer, I was in a band.
Back in high school I told my dad, "I'm going to have a computer someday."
And he said that it cost as much as a house-the downpayment on a house.
And I said, "Well, I'll live in an apartment."
For every job you require a kind of mindset. To be a teacher one should be knowledgeable. To be a software engineer you should know computer data system analysis, computer language etc. So, my mindset is not aligned with politics.
I have a brilliant memory of being driven back to school when 'Super Trouper' was number one in the charts in 1980. When it came on the radio my mum just drove right past the school gates! When you're 11 years old and meant to be going back to boarding school, that's a great feeling.
I love my dad and respect him and miss him, but I never hung around my father that much because my dad was a lawyer and engineer, and he really didn't understand what I was about. I was supposed to go to law school at UCLA - I was admitted - and instead of going to law school, I went on the road with a band.
People ask me if I'm going to open a school. Why not? I think I should. Maybe not a typical school where anyone can come but with young fighters definitely one day. I don't have the nerves for amateurs.
I'm from Nigerian descent, and the classic Nigerian mentality is 'Stay in school! You're going to be a doctor, you're going to be a lawyer.' That is what it is. Thankfully my parents knew my situation was different because I definitely didn't want to be a doctor, I definitely didn't want to be a lawyer.
There's a different physiology happening between the sound waves and the body that doesn't happen with music playing off the computer. About five years ago, I got a turntable that hooks up to your computer, and I put the vinyl in there and I listened to it back-to-back with a CD, and it didn't even compare. But people don't have time to go track down vinyl, lower it in, all that. And they probably don't care. It's hard to make music knowing that it's not going to be received by the listener in the way that it should be.
When I worked in an office, I was definitely using a computer that should've been long gone over a decade ago but wasn't because it wasn't broken so they weren't going to fix it.
In high school, one of the things I loved doing was this after-school program where you would teach computer skills to some of the maintenance folks at school.
I pushed the process forward by saying, 'We should do this, this, and this right now. Please find the budget for me to find a structural engineer, a mechanical engineer, a civil engineer, so we can do the preliminary work.'
I pushed the process forward by saying, 'We should do this, this, and this right now. Please find the budget for me to find a structural engineer, a mechanical engineer, a civil engineer, so we can do the preliminary work.
My father, a math professor in Hong Kong, worked as an electrical engineer here. My mother was an art teacher, but once we came to the United States, she went back to school and became certified as a special-education teacher.
Out of grad school, I worked as a tech writer for a while before going into computer coding for a living.